A self-described \u201cmilitary brat,\u201d Michel Gaumond says he \u201cfound food\u201d as a kid going to school in Germany, recounting a single instant where that appreciation was forged.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring a school field trip, I had some bread with Westphalian ham and Gruyere baked right into it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI bought a loaf with money my parents had given me for the trip and finished the whole thing on the bus home. How could something be so delicious?\u201d<\/p>\n
The chef and owner of Maker Feed Co. (MFCo.) located in Cumberland, would also tell his sister that one day he wanted a house that had a room full of pickles and cured meats.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now I have a restaurant that does that.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a year of culinary school, Gaumond left the formal learning environment and returned to the hurly-burly of professional cooking.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was learning way more on the line at restaurants,\u201d he says. \u201cThe cooks may have been characters, but they took their craft seriously. And I love the camaraderie.\u201d<\/p>\n
In parsing his restaurant\u2019s name \u2013 Maker Feed Co. \u2013 Gaumond describes a straightforward connection between the cooks, the producers and farmers, butchers and fishmongers (the \u201cmakers\u201d) and the people they feed (his customers).<\/p>\n
His business partner has a network of farmers that the kitchen draws on and keeps the menu as local and as responsibly produced as possible; \u201cfarm-to-table\u201d restaurants are no longer de rigeur: they are today commonplace at a certain echelon of dining and that\u2019s the approach here.<\/p>\n
With its eclectic d\u00e9cor inside, the old building was originally an apothecary\u2019s store and personal residence \u2013 \u201cthere are lots of stories about the property,\u201d says Gaumond \u2013 and has been a couple of restaurants before he opened MFCo. during the business roller coaster of the pandemic in 2020.<\/p>\n
There are 65 seats over three floors with capacity doubling with summertime patios. Gaumond calls MFCo. a destination dining spot with 30 per cent of his customers travelling from Ottawa and Montreal.<\/p>\n
The kitchen cooks what you\u2019ll find at a French bistro. According to Gaumond, he likes the relative simplicity of the cuisine that then might branch off into something Vietnamese or Moroccan, but there are French connections there too.<\/p>\n
The current spring menu is a half-dozen appetizers and soups and a main-course lineup of bistro classics: confit, moules-frites, beurre blanc, sauce B\u00e9arnaise \u2013 the offspring of \u201cMother Sauce\u201d Hollandaise with butter, egg yolk, vinegar and herbs.<\/p>\n
Salade Ni\u00e7oise has a surf-tweak of tuna and roast sardine, plus there\u2019s flat iron steak-frites with Bordelaise.<\/p>\n
Citing that there are not a lot of similar menus in the area, it\u2019s a niche Gaumond says they strive to fill.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the restaurants I\u2019ve been to recently, it\u2019s like everyone is being too clever. I want people to read the menu here and know what will be on their plate. We make that in our style to taste really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Consider the filet de b\u0153uf en cro\u00fbte \u2013 Beef Wellington, \u201cone of the most classic dishes,\u201d Gaumond says, that many of those travelling diners are seeking.<\/p>\n
Pinning down the origin of the dish is impossible and few, if any, true recipes are extant, but its history is nevertheless interesting: it\u2019s often credited as being a traditional and bona fide English dish named for the Duke of Wellington.<\/p>\n
For all his maniacal TV-persona ranting, chef Gordon Ramsay is an extraordinary cook with several Michelin-starred restaurants who, in his \u201cMaster Class,\u201d prepares a perfect Beef Wellington.
\nHis recipe includes Dijon mustard, some prosciutto and a chive cr\u00eape to help keep the pastry from getting soggy, along with the traditional mushroom duxelles.<\/p>\n
But the truth is that cooks have been packing ingredients into pastry for more than four hundred years.<\/p>\n
In 1599, \u201cpie-cruster eater\u201d was a term of disparagement, and in aristocratic Elizabethan residences, any number of proteins were cooked in thick, tough pastry shells called a \u201ccoffin,\u201d which was cracked open and discarded (or fed to the dogs that \u201cworked\u201d in the kitchens) and the meaty contents inside served and eaten.<\/p>\n
In France, filet de b\u0153uf en cro\u00fbte is a chunk of beef cooked in pastry that, given historical international relations, certainly wouldn\u2019t be honouring a Brit like Arthur Wellesley.<\/p>\n
The MFCo. version has a layer of prosciutto inside to add some saltiness, Gaumond says. The time-consuming puff pastry is sourced from an outside producer which he says is an excellent pastry that is difficult to make consistently.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur kitchen is very hot, especially in summer,\u201d he says. \u201cWe once made our own, but with the inconsistent heat and humidity in here, it\u2019s hard to get it perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n
And cooks strive for that perfect dish.<\/p>\n
Beef tenderloin is trimmed and portioned before it is cooked sous vide to a rare 110F; the Wellingtons are then \u201creverse\u201d seared (rather than at the start of cooking), cooled and finally swaddled in their pastry awaiting the finishing cook.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Wellington is baked to order, and it takes about 30 minutes to get the golden-brown pastry and a medium-rare centre,\u201d says Gaumond.<\/p>\n
The MFCo. menu changes regularly says Gaumond, adding that they are \u201cnever the same restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe try to keep it fresh and play with different foods and how we cook what we get from the farmers without being too clever.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, like the historic dish itself, Gaumond says the Wellington is a menu mainstay for the time being.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something comforting about filet de b\u0153uf en cro\u00fbte,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a meat and potatoes meal with our parsnip pur\u00e9e and a nice rich mustard sauce. And it\u2019s one of the only Wellingtons around. We can\u2019t take it off the menu. It has become a staple.\u201d<\/p>\n
Food writer Andrew Coppolino lives in Rockland. He is the author of \u201cFarm to Table\u201d and co-author of \u201cCooking with Shakespeare.\u201d Follow him on Instagram at @andrewcoppolino.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A self-described \u201cmilitary brat,\u201d Michel Gaumond says he \u201cfound food\u201d as a kid going to school in Germany, recounting a single instant where that appreciation was forged. \u201cDuring a school field trip, I had some bread with Westphalian ham and Gruyere baked right into it,\u201d he says. \u201cI bought a loaf with money my parents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":100399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-affaires"],"acf":[],"featured_media_global":[],"yoast_head":"\n